The trombone

This is the first comprehensive study of the trombone in English. It covers the instrument, its repertoire, the way it has been played, and the social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts within which it has developed. The book explores the origins of the instrument, its invention in the fifteenth century, and its story up to modern times, also revealing hidden aspects of the trombone in different eras and countries.
The book looks not only at the trombone within classical music but also at its place in jazz, popular music, popular religion, and light music. Trevor Herbert examines each century of the trombone's development and details the fundamental impact of jazz on the modern trombone. By the late twentieth century, he shows, jazz techniques had filtered into the performance idioms of almost all styles of music and transformed ideas about virtuosity and lyricism in trombone playing.

• List of illustrations, music examples and tables p. viii
• Acknowledgements p. xii
• Author's note p. xiv
• Introduction p. 1
• 1 The instrument: its parts and their development p. 9
• 2 Trombone technique p. 30
• 3 The origins of the trombone p. 45
• 4 Players and cultures in the later Renaissance p. 68
• 5 Performances and repertoires in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries p. 83
• 6 Decline, survival and rehabilitation: the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries p. 109
• 7 Didacticism and the idea of virtuosity p. 127
• 8 The trombone in the modern orchestra p. 151
• 9 Valve trombones and other nineteenth-century introductions p. 182
• 10 Popular music p. 204
• 11 The Moravians and other popular religions p. 229
• 12 Orchestral trombone playing in the age of sound recordings p. 243
• 13 Jazz p. 263
• 14 Modernism, postmodernism and retrospection p. 285
• Appendix 1 Surviving instruments from before 1800 p. 311
• Appendix 2 Centres of trombone repertoire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries p. 320
• Appendix 3 Slide trombone methods: an indicative list p. 327
• Appendix 4 Valve trombone methods: an indicative list p. 331
• Appendix 5 Orchestral trombone sections, c. 1780-c. 1930 p. 333
• Appendix 6 C. G. Conn endorsements, c. 1928 p. 337
• Notes p. 343
• Bibliography p. 367
• Index p. 387